REALITY BLOSSOMS FOR 3 PLAYWRIGHTS

Getting one’s play produced is, for many, a fantasy.

A producer has to believe in the material. A theater owner has to believe the producer can deliver a show that will draw an audience.

When a playwright, producer and theater are all unknown quantities, the likelihood that the fantasy will remain a fantasy is virtually assured.

But just to prove that generalizations can be wrong, Marvin’s Dinner Theater is showcasing the NewWorks Theatre production of “Trio,” a set of three one-act plays by new San Diego playwrights, through July 26.

For the playwrights, this professional production has helped them to believe in themselves. As Geri Massion said, “Now (that) I can say I have a production at Marvin’s . . . I’ve been able to say to people I’m a playwright and not be embarrassed.”

That it all came together is a tribute to the importance of timing and luck.

Not long after playwrights Massion, Ellie Stein and Sheryl North started trying to find an audience for their work, they met Jack Barefield, who started NewWorks Theatre just to showcase plays by new local writers.

And not long after Barefield put this show together, Marvin Gamza of Marvin’s Dinner Theater was actively looking for what he calls “different” and “interesting” material for the dinner theater he started as an experiment 6 1/2 months ago in one room of his restaurant.

Of course, what would be truly amazing is if this fledgling triumvirate of forces--playwrights, producer and theater owner--managed to pull off their collaboration without a hitch.

That lucky they haven’t been.

For the most part, the plays are green, and it shows.

Also, on opening night, as critics watched, one of the actresses in the third play found herself too ill to continue, turning that night’s “trio” into a duo and a half.

While the actress was able to perform on subsequent nights, it was too late for the reviews.

But ask North, Massion and Stein how they feel about that opening night, and while they all use the word “disappointing,” it is with self-deprecating laughter and a refusal to dwell on the negative.

Instead, they segue swiftly into sympathy for the actress and the gratitude they feel toward Barefield and Gamza for taking a chance on their work.

Stein said: “Not everything I do is going to work and I appreciate the fact that Marvin (Gamza) had the courage to put on these plays. . . . It’s a positive experience to get your play shown anywhere when you’re an unknown.”

Having their work produced was not something that any of these women counted on.

Stein and Massion began working on plays relatively late in life.

For Stein, the spur was the dissolution of her marriage of 25 years. When it broke up, she left New York for the West Coast, eventually moving to San Diego and remarrying.

She began writing after she got politically involved with the rights of older women through the Older Women’s League and the City of San Diego Council on Aging.

“I want to give a new awareness of the fact that older women are treated as second-class citizens . . . (because) we’ve spent most of our time as homemakers. The way to get my message across is through theater.”

Stein’s play, “Sixty and Holding,” tells the story of a widow and two divorcees living together and sparring about how they’re going to spend the rest of their lives.

It is Stein’s second play. The first, about an ailing woman in a nursing home, will be produced in December by the Little Theatre of Alexandria in Virginia.

Like Stein, Massion did not begin writing plays until after she moved to San Diego. For her, that was after her husband retired from the Air Force.

Massion is much more interested in entertainment than messages, however, and “Catalyst,” her first and only play to date, reflects this.

The idea for “Catalyst” came from a newspaper clipping Massion had carried around for years. It was a review of a book about real-life ironies, and it included a story about a fireman who rescued a cat from a tree only to run it over on his way out.

Several drafts later, the story grew into a tale of a faded Southern ex-movie queen who believes her cat is the incarnation of her fifth and favorite dead husband.

At 28, North is the baby of the group. She put off her writing for a different reason than the other women--to become a doctor.

She wrote “An Afternoon in the Park” five years ago when she took a playwrighting class in her senior year of medical school.

She was given a class assignment to come up with a story about a character in his 20s and a character in his 40s.

The result was an argument between a young person getting ready to hang himself and an older person who couldn’t care less about it.

North, now a practicing radiologist, is working on a full-length play and a movie script. Stein, who is also a producer and commentator for KPBS-FM, is working on a full-length play commissioned by Torrey Pine Players. Massion is working on television scripts and, possibly, a sequel to “Catalyst” that she says Barefield is trying to talk her into.

Critical reception aside, for the playwrights, the flurry of work that has resulted from the experience can be considered a personal measure of the plays’ success.

Barefield, too, sits at work planning an original production for children that is scheduled to appear at the Sixth Avenue Playhouse in October. And Gamza, despite the fact that this show, like his earlier ones, will probably not pay for itself, is still interested in seeing the work of new local playwrights.

He gives himself about a year to see if he can find an audience for his unusual dinner theater fare. And while he looks, he just may make a few more playwrights’ fantasies come true.